Saturday, June 25, 2016

Parents and teachers know kids lose scholarly momentum over the summer, and research backs them up.

Certain kinds of summer camps go a long way to keep the brain’s synapses firing. They are expensive and most parents can only afford a week or two, if they can afford it at all. And by now it may be too late to sign up for good camps anyway.

How can we keep young brains firing on all cylinders so students can hit the ground running when back in school in late August?

I recently came across a website listing 1,800 online courses. Class-Central.com does not provide the courses but lists courses produced by universities like Harvard, Stanford and Princeton, and companies such as Google and Facebook.

High school students, maybe even some middle schoolers, can watch these videos to get a feel for subjects they are interested in. Even if they do not finish an entire course, it will get them thinking. And it is a wonderful way to dip their toes into subjects they may want to major in at college.

The courses are free, although there may be a cost for add-on benefits such as course credit, certificates and mentoring.

I’ve tried to learn the Java programming language a few times from books. I am having more success with an online course out of San Jose State University. I watch at least a few minutes a day. Today, I watched for an hour or two as I procrastinate writing this column.

I’m not looking for any kind of college credit or certificate. I just want to be able to write my own Android app some day, and that takes Java.

There are courses in history, science, mathematics, engineering, education, social sciences, personal management and others.

Think your kids won’t sit down for an online video course? Check their YouTube viewing history. Younger kids especially are inhaling Minecraft videos to learn how to better play Minecraft.

Young girls are making millionaires out of young YouTubers who train them on the best ways to apply makeup. Others go to YouTube to learn to skateboard or other things that interest them.

When the Children’s Television Workshop did its initial research into education – research that lead directly to creating Sesame Street – they discovered children get more out of a video if their parents sit down and watch with them. That is why Sesame Street has some jokes that would go over the head of children, like characters named Meryl Sheep and Placido Flamingo.

In addition to reading to your younger children every night, consider watching a short educational video with them every day.

The first home computers, the Apple II, the Commodore 64, Radio Shack’s Model I, came with the BASIC programming language. Somewhere along the line companies stopped doing that.

I miss the days when young people looked at their new computers and asked “What can I make this computer do?” instead of “What can this computer do?”

In 1980 I knew a 12-year-old who asked that question, and by 14 he was writing programs for a 20-person financial shop. He’s made a mint programming apps for Wall Street.

Companies such as Google, Facebook and many others were founded by kids who asked that question.

Kids can begin programming right now at sites such as Scratch, created by MIT. It lets them create animations and games they can share with their friends.

The visual programming concepts they learn can be used in App Inventor, also by MIT, to create programs for their Android phones and tablets. They do not even have to have an Android device; the site has an emulator.

And the logical concepts they learn in Scratch or the others will directly help them if they move to a more conventional programming language such as Java or C++.

Your Minecraft enthusiast may already be programming. Minecraft scripts, called Mods by your kids, are small Javascript apps that make Minecraft do things. Just don’t tell them they are learning a marketable skill when they think they are playing.

Note for parents: Javascript is in no way related to the Java programming language. Yet, Javascript is a programming language extensively used in creating websites and is a desirable skill to have.

In 20 years, when we hear the 30-year-old founders of 10-year-old groundbreaking companies talk about how they got interested in technology, we are going to hear a lot about Minecraft mods.

Let’s see if we can’t make the transition back to school this fall less painful for students and teachers, and more productive too.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

For years I have used steno pads, filling them with notes of my day, phone numbers, lists, things to do and details of projects.

When I was at work, or anytime I was away from my apartment, I tried to carry a pocket notebook. The notes I took in the smaller notebook did not always make it to the steno pad. And then there was the challenge of finding a specific note.

I suppose that is why I have been such a big fan of Evernote. It may surprise many to learn I actually use another app on my phone more than Evernote.

Google Keep and Evernote are the two most popular of a legion of smartphone, desktop and web apps for note taking.

I began using Evernote on my PC in 2008. Today, I have more than 23,000 notes in it. Evernote has been really good about making apps for Android and iPhones, as well as other portable devices.

Note: This online version has a bit more copy than the newspaper published this week.Google Keep came out in 2013. It was almost toy-like to Evernote’s behemoth. It was colorful, fast and designed primarily for use on a phone, although there was also a great web client.I find myself using Keep mostly when on my phone and Evernote on my PC. They do not compete with each other as much as complement each other.

Keep is faster to use on a phone than Evernote. When I have to record a piece of information, it is easy and fast to type it into Keep. When someone recommends a restaurant, a doctor or gives me their phone number, I type it into Keep.

If I’m at my PC and I think of something I need from the grocery store, I add it to my grocery list in Keep using the web version. The synchronization is so fast, that it's on my phone before I leave my home office.

At the store, I can easily pull up the shopping list in Keep. It can even have checkboxes so I can check off my purchases as I go.

I can add a reminder to a Keep note to go shopping after work or even to popup the list when I enter the store. That’s handy when I stop at a store for one thing and am reminded of other things I want to buy there.

So when do I use Evernote? Recently I researched dishwashers online. Each time I found one I liked, I would use Evernote’s excellent web clipper to copy the web page.

Later on, when I narrowed the list down to a few I wanted to see at the store, I copied the make and model numbers to Keep in the browser. Keep would be easier to pull up in the store.

On Android phones I can tell Google Now by voice to “Add ice cream to grocery list” and it finds a note in Keep titled “Grocery list” and adds ice cream to it.

Keep only recently added a web clipper. And when a web page is clipped to Keep, it only captures a link to the page. Evernote’s clipper captures the entire page.

Also, Evernote’s Windows app can watch disk folders and automatically upload the files into Evernote. If I download a PDF file and want it in Evernote, I save it to a particular disk folder and it is moved into Evernote automatically.

Evernote is for the more heavy-duty lifting. I use it to capture research for columns, store financial records and scans or photos of important documents. If I were a student, I’d use it to store class notes, handouts, research and all the material associated with a course.

Evernote’s phone app is useful enough. I can easily open it and pull up a note, although it takes longer than Keep to get to a specific note.

I tend to scan or photograph almost every document I get into Evernote. Once at Costco, I pulled up a prescription on Evernote and showed it to the pharmacist and found out I could save a lot of money filling that prescription there.